Solved! Had a virus and i THINK i solved it

Oct 15, 2021
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As the title says I had a virus on my laptop, but I think I solved it, although i have some questions and worries about the whole situation. I will explain in detail exactly what happened.

Last night I downloaded a game setup from a site ive been using for years (never had this happen b4), i try to open the setup to said game to install, but it doesnt open, so thinking that i had this issue b4 I disable my antivirus' shields, avast, and it works, the setup opens but something strange happens, all it does is open command prompt a few times, so i instantly think something is wrong and turn on all of avasts shields back on, the antivirus quarantined multiple files and while i scrolled through the notification i saw trojan mentioned. I thought at the time that the problem was solved so after a while I went to sleep. This morning I went to play a game I usually play but I couldnt log in, I saw that my account has been hacked and its email and phone that were attached to it had been changed, do note that this has been a issue with this game (eg. ppl getting their accs stolen) so it might just be a coincidence. Thats that, after, I open Steam, but it asks me to sign in, and yet again my credentials are incorrect, I managed to recover the account, but at the time I couldn't help but think that it was related to the incident that happened last night (the weirdest thing I found was that I didnt get any notifications that my password has been changed). I change all my passwords (using the laptop) including my google accounts. After a while a notification pops on my phone saying it disconnected my laptop from the google account because it might have had a suspicious device or program connected to it, I dont remember the exact word used but you get the idea. The solution that Ive always known when it comes to viruses is to factory reset and thats what I tried to do, but when I tried it it said something along the lines of "There was a problem resetting your pc. No changes were made." And so i googled solutions. Two of said solutions were to run sfc/ scannow in command prompt, I did that but it said everything was fine, then I did
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth, but that also said everything was fine, the last solution I found was to run cd %windir%\system32\config ren system system.001 ren software software.001, but that said "access is denied" even though I run command prompt as administrator, so the next thing I did was to grab my usb, install windows on it and boot my laptop on it, after that i went to factory reset and it worked. The only account I have logged into on my now resetted laptop was microsoft bc I am afraid of the virus still remaining.

If you need more details let me know.

Could it have survived after the factory reset? How can I tell?
Can it be transmitted through wifi? Are any of my other devices in danger?
What kind of virus could it have been?
 
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Solution
First, this is why you should NEVER download apps/games from questionable sources.

To be safe, I would recommend a full, clean installation of Windows (not a reset) and your legit applications.

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
First, this is why you should NEVER download apps/games from questionable sources.

To be safe, I would recommend a full, clean installation of Windows (not a reset) and your legit applications.

 
Solution